


An Afternoon in Smallville

by gakorogirl



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gakorogirl/pseuds/gakorogirl
Summary: Bruce Wayne is easy to talk to, even if almost everything he says is just part of an elaborate lie. Batman, though, isn't one for small talk. Until you ask him about his kids.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [(More Powerful Than) Butterfly Wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8038069) by [Tmae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tmae/pseuds/Tmae). 



> Based on a tumblr post that I will add the link to as soon as I trawl through my blog and find it! Additionally, this takes place in the same universe as Tmae's Bart AU. Enjoy!

Bruce stares out at the fields in the distance- alternating squares of golden corn and green soy. He should be back in Gotham. It’s very quiet out here, especially compared to the city, although he can hear ice clinking in a glass in the kitchen, a few cars driving slowly down the highway that runs through Smallville. Even as far away from the city as Wayne Manor is, the hum of traffic is never really absent, but here it’s barely existent at all.

He picks up a family photo from one of the bookshelves. It’s Clark, and his parents. Even at such a young age- probably no more than seven or eight- he’s immediately recognizable, lifting a bale of hay over one shoulder. He looks happy.

“So,” says Martha Kent, setting down a glass in front of him and pouring it full of iced lemonade, “Tell me about yourself. It’s nice to know that Clark’s meeting new superhero friends.” She waits expectantly, and Bruce thinks briefly that she should really be talking to one of the other members of the League. Vic likes to talk. So does Bart, and if Bart doesn’t qualify as a “superhero friend” nobody does. 

“I’m Batman,” he says. He sets the picture back on the shelf and says, “Nice photo.”

“Oh yes, that’s from around the time Clark’s powers really started developing,” replies Martha brightly. She refuses to be diverted from the topic of Bruce, and presses on, “But really, tell me about yourself. Do you have any hobbies?”

The safe, billionaire-Bruce-Wayne answer to that question would be,  _ I’m really a bit of a thrill junkie, you know, whitewater rafting, mountain climbing, that kind of thing.  _ A good way to explain away bruises and scrapes and long disappearances. But this isn’t a conversation that Bruce Wayne is part of. It’s a conversation directed at  _ Batman. _

“Um, you know,” he says with a shrug. “Crime fighting takes up a lot of time, especially in Gotham. We have a lot of villains.”

He sits down and drums his fingers on the table, a little restless. 

“Have some lemonade,” says Martha, looking concerned. “You seem worried.” Bruce picks up the glass and sips at it, staring out the window again. Green soy and golden corn, a few farmhouses, telephone poles at even intervals along the highway.

“I hope everything’s going alright in Gotham,” he replies. “I left Batgirl in charge while I was away.”

“Batgirl?” asks Martha. “Your...daughter?”

“A friend’s daughter,” says Bruce, smiling a little. “Very talented young girl, she has a real gift with technology. I’m just worried that if something big breaks out in Gotham while I’m gone-”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Martha reassures him. She looks at him for a minute, then adds, “The papers are saying you have a new ward- and Clark tells me you have a new Robin. What’s he like?” A timer goes off in the kitchen, and Martha disappears for a moment, returning with a tray of chocolate chip cookies held in oven-mitt hands.

“His name’s Tim,” Bruce tells her as she moves the cookies onto a rack to cool. “He figured out by himself who I was, and let himself into the Manor one day to talk to me. Managed to disable the security systems, too- he’s only been able to do it once, though, Batgirl souped up the security systems after he broke in.” He pulls a picture out of his wallet. “Here he is at STAR Labs, he does some work on their supercomputers when he’s got the time. And here’s one of him punching through a cinderblock, and in the background is Dick, one of m- my other son.” 

“Also a superhero, I assume?” asks Martha.

“Oh, yes. I don’t see him too much any more, he’s under deep cover a lot of the time. And when he’s not, he’s in Blüdhaven.” Bruce looks out the window for a minute before adding, “I think he’d like it out here.”

“I know how you feel,” Martha says kindly. “Clark hasn’t had time to come by too often, he’s so busy saving the world. The world seems like it needs more saving these days than it did before.”

“Maybe we’ve just started calling attention to ourselves.”

Bruce stares out the window, green and gold and telephone poles stretching off into the distance. Someone drives by on a  _ tractor,  _ going about twenty miles an hour on the highway _.  _ He’s pretty sure that should be illegal.

Briefly, Bruce thinks that if he could fly, this is exactly the kind of place where he’d want to learn. (And as always, when he comes out here, he remembers that he tried to  _ kill  _ Clark. He had somehow convinced himself that the Superman wasn’t human, wasn’t a person. He can’t pretend that’s true any more. He’s not sure if he ever really believed it.)

“Bruce?”

“Sorry, lost in thought.” He gives the kind of self-deprecating laugh that he’s perfected over years of pretending. “The cookies smell great.”

“Why, thank you. They should be nearly cooled enough to eat,” says Martha brightly. 

Bruce spends the rest of the afternoon systematically eating an entire tray of cookies and talking about Dick and Tim and Steph and Cass and Barbara, telling Martha about how he met them, showing her pictures that he’d forgotten he’d even _taken-_ Cass holding an actual bat in one had with Tim protesting in the background, a group photo in which only Tim was looking anywhere near the camera, Cass sleeping under a table at a party, Steph helping Harper load a bag with food at what looked like the same party- he thought it might have been a New Year’s function at the newly renovated manor- Barbara smiling for half a dozen reporters after she had done a bit of investigation and revealed the first Lex Luthor’s abuse of his son (along with several major illegal operations that Lexcorp had been running right up until the younger Lex had been tossed into Arkham), Dick as a very small child hanging upside down from a bannister.

“I think I’ve got one more,” says Bruce, holding a small, tattered photo. “This is from-”

_ Oh. _

“Who’s that?”

“That’s my second oldest son, Jason. He’s...he’s dead.” It’s a photo of Jason at the high school production of  _ Hamlet,  _ grinning and posing with a prop sword _.  _ He had played Laertes.

“I’m sorry,” says Martha softly.

“I should go,” Bruce says, and stands up. “It was nice to talk with you. I’ll let Clark know you said hello.”

“Be sure and bring some of your kids by next time,” Martha tells him as he heads for the door. She catches up to him and presses a wrapped package into his hands before he leaves, waving at him out the window as he drives down the quiet little highway.

The package is full of hot chocolate-chip cookies. There is a note inside telling him to take care of himself.

Bruce is a grown man and does  _ not  _ pretend that the cookies might be from his own mother. He doesn’t. At all.


End file.
